Well, that's it!!

Just keep on coming, something is bound to get through even the hardest of heads!!

Take it one day at a time, it's not the 90 days, if it is, then what will you do after the 90 days?

KOT!!

Part of what I do for work is study and write about personalities and the role they play in a work environment.

As part of a project I was working on, I was filling out an online values test. Probably 400 words or so to describe different values. You're supposed to pick out no more than 20. Then you have to rank them.

So I'm running along this list and I completely skip over Honesty. And I notice half a dozen words down the list that I didn't even give Honesty a minute's consideration.

Now where did Honesty go in my value system? I would have thought that for a Jew who is a servant of God Honesty is pretty high on the list. Return lost objects, vows -- things like that are heavy.

But if people can't know what I do when I'm alone, I have to jettison Honesty as a high value of mine don't I?

Stopped me in my tracks today.

Dov would love that post.

It is somethin' we/I struggle with.

I do consider myself honest.
I honestly, never tell a lie.
Perhaps exaggerate a bit...at times.

And yet, my life was/is a lie (and this thought can lead to a depression of sorts, and a givin' up type of attitude).

So how are the two justified?

My answer.....I don't really give a darn; I will leave that for the philosophers. I know what I need to do, and that is to focus on recovery. The big lie that I lived will have to be dealt with in the next world. [A similar question and answer can be used regardin' the issue of tellin' one's spouse.]

b'hatzlachah

I agree. I wasn't suggesting looking back and feeling regret for having lied. What is is.
I am only talking about going forward. In the moment whenever I give in to the urge to drop into the black hole in my personality called my addiction and fail to direct my thoughts, I miss out and settle for mediocrity.

I feel like I'm losing it today. It is so hard to be different from who I've been for all these years.

Reach out.

b'hatzlachah

I've spend hours reading the posts here and have tried to study the ones from those who are successful -- and those who are less successful. I get the Daily Chizuk, I have a picture of Rav Kook on my monitor, I have an accountability partner who is older and not someone I can just schmooze, I chat here, I post, I had called someone.

But there's still something I'm not getting...

It's hard to describe, this thing I wasn't getting, but the best way to describe it is there's a thread through all of those of you who are staying sober -- and I didn't feel I had it.

And the thought of getting sober, losing sobriety, getting it, losing it over and over seems foolish. Plus I know from my past experience that if I go down that path ultimately I will quit and go back to indulging my lust.

So last night before bed I started rereading the GYE manual. And there it is in black and white. Successful quitters, sober for the rest of their life, members of GYE, refer to their sobriety like its a thing.

They talk about protecting it and guarding it. It's not a casual relationship for them. They drop their eyes when they see triggers to protect their sobriety. They avoid things where they are vulnerable to losing it.

Their sobriety has become a belief that holds a place in their awareness. For those of us who are religious and have irreligious family members think about the contrast between where we see the Torah and the mitzvot and those family members. They think we're a little nuts, don't they.

But we know that if we relax, if we eat unkosher food when we're with them or whatever little compromises they ask us to make, we lose something.

So my game plan is to insert a belief into my mind that's as strong as my belief that there is a God and that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. My belief is that my sobriety is precious to me and must be guarded by me during every waking hour. My belief is that because I am a lust addict I must do this for my sanity and for all that is good.

My response to your post, Bezrat, is one short, yet very big word:

WOW!

In other words (or word), your life has become "unmanageable" the way it is.

that is the key.

Do you wanna return to an unmanageable life, spiralin' outta control, or perhaps, do you wanna live?

The choice is clear and easy; the decision is easy; the implementation is not, but it's damn worth it!

b'hatzlachah

Beyond unmanageable -- pure living Hell.

Yes, I've been there as well.
That's what brought me here.
That's what brought me to Israeli therapist.
That's what brought me to SA group.
That's NOT what brought me to a specialist.

b'hatzlachah

Shavuah Tov,

I was reading a book recommended to me by my business coach by Steven Pressfield "The War of Art."

Pressfield is a best selling author and he wrote "The War of Art" to help other artists, authors, businesspeople -- anybody who creates things to overcome procrastination.

He has this model that he calls Resistance which fights us from being great. He devotes the first section to describing this Resistance. Then he spends the rest of the book talking about how to overcome Resistance.

So I'm laying on the couch in the Living Room on Shabbos and I read this:

Sometimes Resistance takes the form of sex, or an
obsessive preoccupation with sex. Why sex? Because
sex provides immediate and powerful gratification. When
someone sleeps with us, we feel validated and approved of,
even loved. Resistance gets a big kick out of that. It knows
it has distracted us with a cheap, easy fix and kept us from
doing our work.

Of course not all sex is a manifestation of Resistance. In
my experience, you can tell by the measure of hollowness
you feel afterward. The more empty you feel, the more
certain you can be that your true motivation was not
love or even lust but Resistance.

It goes without saying that this principle applies to
drugs, shopping, masturbation, TV, gossip, alcohol, and
the consumption of all products containing fat, sugar,
salt, or chocolate.

How's that? Kind of nailed me.

For me the feeling after acting out is horrible. I mope around for days. I am down on myself. I can't really think straight. I hate the feeling. I think I take on the symptoms of clinical depression. The only thing that can get rid of it is more acting out -- its a vicious cycle.

So today when I was sitting at my desk in the kind of Sunday afternoon situation where nobody would notice I had disappeared, where I could close my door and not be disturbed... For a while I started thinking, why not just take a peak?

But instead of flashing all those glorious pictures of what it would be like to take a peak, I, instead, stepped inside that horrible feeling I get afterwards. And immediately closed my browser and picked up a sefer, "A Tsadik in Our Times, the Story of Rav Aryeh Levine."

great!
keep it up!
may Hashem bless your success and help you on your journey to purity

I totally relate to that idea of use of our "drug of choice" as "resistance", which is an even lower level than lust. It's just escape from real life. sometimes its not even enjoyable its just a compulsive act of numbing. and i even welcome the horrible feeling afterwards because its a good excuse to not do whatever it is that i should be doing that is so scary to me.